Vending systems are installed within many organizational and institutional buildings and facilities, both public and private, to provide convenient access to foods, beverages and assorted products for the convenience of patrons. This availability without the expense of “manned” or “human-staffing” requirements to complete these transactions in exchange for these vended products benefits both the merchants and the patrons. Whenever the needed vended product is conveniently available, a patron can complete a transaction without external assistance to receive the desired vended product. Any individual with the physical access and the ability to enter the required financial tender can accomplish the operational requirement to select the desired product and can activate the dispensing of the vended product. Not only do the vending systems provide convenience to vending patrons, but they also provide significant financial benefits to the institutions that make the vended products available to those patrons and populations that frequent their facilities.
Historically, the dispensing of products in vending machines has not been challenged, except in the case of tobacco products. Cigarettes and tobacco products have previously been easily accessible by minors from vending machine systems because of convenient physical access within public and private facilities. This led to significant concerns and the ultimate abolition of cigarette vending machines. The problem simply was that anyone with access to the vending machine could gain access to the tobacco products because there existed no effective pre-authorization method or age verification to prevent the unauthorized dispensing of tobacco products to minors through these vending systems.
The placement of vending systems in general, and product selection availabilities within these vending systems, are typically evaluated and approved by the institutional boards and facility directors in which the vending systems are to be installed. The institutional evaluation often uses the financial interests as a primary consideration for the placement and selection of a specific vending service provider. As with the placement of vending systems within school districts, revenues are the primary consideration when a school district determines what beverage or snack brands are permitted to place the vended products within their facilities. These vending contracts are extremely lucrative for both the school districts and beverage/snack companies because of the captive market that the school district population represents as a customer market for a fixed period of time throughout the school year. These “Exclusive Pouring Rights” contracts are awarded by the school boards to bidding beverage companies by school districts to place vending systems within school districts and make available beverages and other vended products to the student and faculty population. They pay revenues upfront for the placement and also pay sale percentage royalty depending on sales volume. School Boards submit elaborate “Requests For Proposal (RFP)” to potential bidders to determine the most lucrative vending deals possible, and there are also specialized consultants to structure RFP's and evaluate responses to maximize financial returns on these “Exclusive-Pour Contracts”. This practice has been executed nationally for some time, however, a recent enormous revenue deal awarded in one of the nations largest school districts has drawn considerable attention and increased scrutiny as to the appropriateness of this practice by School Boards and Beverage/Snack Corporations. As reported in an article titled “Pepsi High” in the St. Petersburg Times on Aug. 31, 2003, the Hillsborough County School District located in the state of Florida awarded the “Exclusive-Pour Contract” to the Pepsi Bottling Group for the sum of 50 (Fifty) Million Dollars over a 12-year period. The extremely large sum of money for access to the student population has led many to question the benefits of this product availability with the increase in childhood obesity and diabetes over the last 20 years within the nation's childhood population.
Nutritional advocates have launched extensive campaigns to expose the potential conflict of interest created within schools when the school districts significantly benefit financially from the increased sales and availability of beverages and “nutrition-less” food items to a student population. More than half of all State Legislatures and their duly elected lawmakers have introduced, evaluated or passed legislative initiatives or enacted laws defining nutritional restrictions regarding vended products within schools. In an effort to counteract these attacks by legislatures, School Boards have empanelled “Nutritional Committees and Parental Review Panels” to review the nutritional impacts of available products and the revenue impacts from implementing such restrictions. Unfortunately, these panels make decisions and shape policy for the entire population, ignoring the consideration of an individual parent's right to determine what specific options should or should not be available for their specific child/children. Granted, the School Board may shape policy to attempt to control access to the vending products by attempting to restrict “time of day” access to vending machines or even mandating that at least 50% of available vending choices be healthy alternative choices, but ultimately, the lack of any actual verification or validation of accessibility on an individual basis will not block the unapproved access by a parent's child/children. The above stated initiatives attempt to define policies and laws that will best interest the overall population, however, the most well intentioned execution of those policies does not actually enforce those policies due to the limits of available vending technologies. It can never police those policies at the individual level unless systems or methods can make it possible for the individual to enforce their individual acceptance, enforce a further restrictions of accepted policies, or even over-ride an accepted policy on any available un-regulated publicly accessible vended product. The specific parent(s) do not currently have the ability to enforce their individual acceptance of established policies, further restrict established policies or further have the ability to over-ride established policies and permit unrestricted access by their child/children to vended products.
Complicating the situation for School Boards, lunch programs are cumbersome and expensive administrative burdens and vending systems can facilitate convenience and efficient distribution throughout the day for supplemental and primary food items. However, vending machine access by children and the lack of “control limits” or “policy enforcement” make it a convenient target for nutrition advocates as a source of obesity. Parental participation in the decision making process within the vending machine during the school day by their child/children is limited to panel or board participation to assist the drafting of general policy and nutritional guidelines. This is less than effective when any child can walk up to a vending machine and buy a candy bar or carbonated sugar beverage without regard for any weight problem or medical condition such as diabetes.
The overwhelming awareness of the vulnerability of our school and organizational populations to emergency situations and terrorist threats have in recent years facilitated the necessity of the development and use of individual identity systems throughout organizations and institutions nationwide. The tragic school events of the Columbine High School massacre, Russian School Terrorist massacre and several other school shooting incidents have accelerated the implementation of student ID programs designed to provide definitive identification and valid head-counts for facility access. Increasingly these ID systems designed to accurately validate one's identity for purposes of safety and security are being utilized for convenience and access to other organizational services, information access and even executing transactions. From checking homework grades on the Internet to getting tickets and attending a basketball and even getting discounted movie tickets, school ID's are often used as an administrative tool in the management of populations and the uniqueness of an individual identity within that population.